Sweet Potato November 2020

November 1 (ish) 2020

To be honest there was just not enough batches brewing so I checked the cellar and saw that I am low on sweet potato.  Since I'm loving the 6 gallon bucket approach I decided to make a big batch this time based on my prior recipe.  Bonus... some of the sweet potatoes came from our garden.

• About 10-12 lbs sweet potatoes
• 3 bananas
• water
• 7 lbs sugar
• yeast
• yeast nutrient

I finely chopped the sweet potatoes and boiled them in 2 large pots for about 3 hours.  A couple hours in I used a masher and wisk to mash it up and boil some more.  The next morning I poured it into the bucket, chopped up the bananas, added the yeast and nutrient.  I checked after 24 hours and it was bubbling and happy.  Doing some math based on the starting sugar I added 7 lbs of sugar.  This should bring the whole thing to about 10-12 percent alcohol when all is done.  After a few days it's bubbling away and very happy.

December 27 - I had previously transferred it to 2 3 gallon carboys and added some bananas and chai tea.  I racked my jalapeno today which freed up my 5 gallon jug.  So I transferred to the 5 gallon and removed all of the lees and mash.  Now it's settling.  Very tasty as always.

April 21 - Will bottle this weekend.  It hasn't cleared so I've been letting it sit.  Haven't tasted it but I can't wait.  Bottling day is always so much fun.

May 2 - OK, didn't get it bottled until today.  This batch will be interesting to see how it ages. found that the seal had broken and it's been open to the air for who knows how long.  Doesn't taste bad, not great either. I think I taste banana. Still, I won't throw it out of the glass so to speak.  We'll see what happens with time.

Rose Hips and Hawthorn Berry Mead

August 14, 2020

 We have a lot of stuff growing right now including rose hips.  We have a ton so I looked up what I can do with them and found an herbalist who makes a "tonic" using rose hips, hawthorn berries, and cinnamon sticks.  Her site says that rose hips are heart healthy and hawthorn is a mild heart and mind stimulant.  She makes this for the holidays.  So, I gave it a shot.

• Hawthorn berries
• Rose hips
• Pectin
• Honey
• Chai tea
• Water

I ordered hawthorn berries from Amazon.  A 1 pound bag was around 12 dollars.  They arrived quickly and were dried.  I measured out a half pound with my cool little scale that Mary B got me.  I also measured out a half pound of rose hips and quartered them.  I put them all in a pot of water and simmered them.  Not too hard because I didn't want to steam away the taste.  I thought it smelled a little Christmas-y.  I added pectin to help it leach out flavors and let it sit overnight in a honey jar.

The next day I took about 4 1/2 pounds of honey and mixed it all together with some yeast.  I split it into 2 jars figuring when I take the high quantity of stuff out of it I should have about a solid gallon plus of mead.  The plan is to add more rose hips to the secondary fermentation.  I'll also taste at that time to decide if I want more honey, add cinnamon, and possibly other winter spices like allspice.

Loving experimentation!

August 25, 2020.

After this bubbled away for a bit it was looking weird.  Very milky but the fermentation had definitely slowed.  I racked it to a gallon and a half although the half had a lot of head space  While I was looking for the recipe approved cinnamon sticks (which I never found) I came across some chai tea bags.  This sounded appealing to me so I dropped them in.  After 2 days I noticed that the fermentation had completely stopped.  The headspace worried me so I took the half gallon and poured it into a quart jar.  Now the gallon and quart are settling and looking nice.  I kept the leftover for tasting and wow, super delicious.  Very spicy with the chai and the hawthorn adds a nice winter type spice as well.  Mary B says she tastes the citrus in it.  I'm not sure I do but in general it's really great.  I can see sipping this in the winter for sure.

September 7

Surprisingly, after sitting a short time on the refrigerator the fermentation stopped and it started to clear.  It looked beautiful and cleared very quickly so I bottled it up.  I didn't want to put it in 750ml bottles as it would be drunk to quickly.  I also didn't want to spend 35 bucks on small bottles so I tried something new.  I used small 12oz ball jars for some of the bottling and booze bottles for some other.  It came out very pretty and is very tasty.  Can't wait to try it in a couple months.

December 1

We were looking for something different and decided to open this a wee bit early and taste.  Wow, very smooth, very tasty.  I tasted caramel, Mary B tasted citrus.  Delicious, it will be hard to let it age and I only made a small batch :).

July 18, 2021 - Had some for an evening tipple

Blackberry Mead August 2020

 August 10, 2020

The yard has some really pretty blackberries that I wanted to take advantage of and I've heard of making blackberry mead so I figured I'd give it a try.  It should be simple.  I picked the berries whenever I saw them ripe and put them in the freezer.  When I had 2 ziplock bags full, about 1.5 pounds I got started.

• Blackberries - 1.5 pounds
• Honey - 9 ish pounds
• Water
• Pectin

Unfortunately I didn't have much pectin.  I took the berries and warmed them in a pot of water to thaw them.  Then I tossed them in the bucket with a little less than 2 gallons of water and about 7 pounds of honey.  I used a hand beater to mash them and tossed in the yeast.  All total it looks like there is about 2 1/2 gallons.  The next day there were lots of bubbles.  I took a gravity test and it came to about 10-11 ABV.  I like it a little stronger so I added another 2 pounds of honey.  It looks a little on the light side too.

Taking the advice of some online friends I will keep picking and storing the berries.  Once the initial fermentation is finished I will add more mashed berries to the secondary ferment to up the flavor and maybe even the hoochness :-)

August 20, 2020

Racked for the first time.  Hydrometer says it still had 4% to go but I was excited to get it into a clear jug so I could watch it.  I added 2 cups of sugar just to pep up the yeast.  I siphoned it to keep as many bits out as possible.  I had frozen about 2 cups of berries, so I warmed them in the microwave with some water and poured them into a bag in the jug.  The original mead was very light in color but had a slight berry taste.  The berries in the secondary should increase the berry flavor.  There was about a quart or more that didn't fit so me and Mary B drank it while watching a Pink Floyd documentary.  Tasty and potent stuff as usual.  This will be really nice when it finishes.

September 28

I bottled it yesterday and of course saved a small bottle to have while watching some TV.  Then I had a great idea for a Sunday afternoon.  Mary B and I watched the Viking show Last Kingdom (Utrid son of Uthrid) while drinking my mead from the new horns that I got from Fridi on Facebook.  Very good time.

June 1 2021 - In celebration of Memorial Day we had Mrs. Mack's meat, a family favorite of Mary B's family.  Mrs. Mack's husband was killed by a sniper in Viet Nam.  We had a bottle of this mead, very very good.  The berry flavor increased with age.  Will definitely make another batch this summer when the berries are ripe.

Fresh Picked Strawberry Wine June 2020

June 12, 2020

Mary B went strawberry picking and grabbed extra so I could make some more strawberry wine.  This will be my first batch using fresh.  I made some from a kit previously.  I checked some online recipes and got the basic gist of the proportions.

• 6 pounds fresh strawberries with the tops cut off
• 6-7 cups of sugar (dehydrated cane juice)
• Water
• Pectin

I used a wine bucket to make it easier to work with the berries.  I poured the berries in and added water to around 2 gallons.  I added some sugar to get things started and used a hand mixer to grind up the berries.  I didn't want to cook them for fear that some of the wonderful flavors and smells would go up in steam.  I had to hand mash some of the berries.  I checked the gravity and it was at about 20% sugar.  I like my wine a little stronger so I added 4 more cups of sugar.  2 cups is one pound so the additional sugar probably only raised the sugar a little.  I'll let it get started and will add some sugar later, maybe.

June 21 - Getting ready to travel to the beach so I didn't want the wine to sit on the mash too long and possibly get funky.  So I racked it.  Very tasty.  Has about 3-5% still to go.  It's still bubbling pretty well and the airlock was bubbling almost right away.  One thing that was fun was I took some of the mash, mixed it with sugar, and put it on my english muffins.  Tasty.

July 19 - Got back from the beach and it had cleared really nicely so I decided to bottle it.  I didn't want it getting funky or anything.  It came out beautiful and so tasty.  Very rich strawberry flavor.  Definitely another to try in the future.  I can't wait to enjoy it in the spring.

Cherry Strawberry Coronacation Wine April 2020

April 15 2020

We've been locked down for a month with the Coronavirus social distancing.  I'll put on the record here that I think it's an overstep on the part of the government.  But that's the end of my political rant.

Through the lockdown we've been trying to support local business as best we can.  My wine supplies supplier and a place I play music is Blue Mountain Wines in Funkstown.  I bought a gallon of cherry wine starter.  It's a ton of corn syrup with natural and artificial flavors.  It also helps them stay in business and it's a quick batch of wine.  I've never used a starter before.

The process couldn't be easier.  Pour in the juice, add water and yeast.  I wanted to add a little of my own flavor so I added a gallon of strawberries that we picked last year.  I let them defrost overnight with about 4 cups of sugar to pull the juice out.  When they were defrosted I used a hand beater to mash them up.  They turned very juicy and delicious.

After adding everything to the jug I was sure to leave some head space.  I checked the gravity and it was set to yield around 13% alcohol.  I did some math and guestimating and added another 8-10 cups of sugar.  2 cups is a pound.  this should bring the final ABV to 15-18 percent.  It tasted delicious when I was checking the gravity.

It's under the table with KV1116 yeast.  After 24 hours the airlock is bubbling and all looks happy.

June 4 - Bubbling has slowed considerably so I thought it was mostly finished.  Racked it to a new glass jug and of course tasted.  Good and strong and very very tasty.  Very tasty.  I'm concerned some of the sweetness will go away after it finishes.  The hydrometer says that it still has 5% to go.  Could have been a bad reading on the lees though.

July 26 - Came back from the beach and this was definitely finished.  It's so dark you can't see through it with a flashlight.  It made 2 cases and is very tasty.  A little on the sweet side.  To be honest I didn't feel that the flavor was as pronounced as batches I've made with fresh fruit.  However it is really very good and I'm sure will age nicely.  I bottled this the same week that Sara and Alex had their little boy Patrick James.  I'm going to save a bottle for them to open in the future for a celebration.  This was a nice experiment to help out the local wine store, it turned out very nicely.

Welches and Wood Chips Feb 2020

I'd heard of using wood chips to flavor wine and heard that it works best with red wine.  So I made a simple batch of welches wine.  I used 3 cans of concentrate to make a gallon of wine.  After the fermentation mostly stopped I boiled some hickory chips (only ones I had) to make sure any natural weird yeasts were gone.  I actually didn't like doing this step because I could see a lot of flavor going down the drain when I poured off the water.

I racked the wine off of the lees and it tastes pretty good as is.  I put three small handfuls of chips.  I'm checking every 2 days for taste.  This morning after 2 days It tastes great.  I didn't taste wood but I do taste something different.  Kind of exciting and interesting.

2/28 - So then I got the flu and it sat a few more days.  I guess it's been 6 days.  I'm tasting something, it tastes good but I wouldn't define it as woody.  It does have a more mellow taste, quite good actually.  Still waiting until I taste hickory or it starts to go south before I end the experiment.

3/4/2020 - Ended the experiment last night.  Put the wine in a half gallon bottle and shared the remaining with Mary B.  Very tasty.  I think the wood mellowed the wine some.  I don't really taste any wood flavor.  the chips were very red so they absorbed something.  I felt like the alcohol content was pretty weak, weaker than when I started.  Can't prove it but there it is.

I think next time I'll make it stronger and will be sure to take some readings.  I'm putting the half gallon away for a while to see how it changes.

May 20 - Cleaned up the wine storage area and found this.  Decided to have some and ended up "sharing" the remaining half gallon with Mary B.  It aged really nicely and wow, what a kick.  Almost too strong (said no one ever).

Pumpkin Feb 2020

February 17, 2020

Looking back through my blog I see that this is the 4th time I've made this wine.  I wanted to go bigger so I took a 6 gallon ale bucket that my friend Dave Fraticelli gave me and made a batch in there.  I reviewed all of my old notes and pretty much went the same rout with a couple notable differences.

Ingredients:

• 6 lbs canned pumpkin
• 10 cups sugar
• 4 lbs honey
• pectin enzyme
• yeast nutrient
• same spices as the original recipe

The last time I made this I noted that I didn't boil the pumpkin.  I changed that this time for no special reason.  The last batch tasted fine but something told me that boiling would be better.  So I took 2 big pots and filled 2/3 full with pumpkin and water.  I boiled for about 20 mins.  After it cooled a little (probably not enough but I get impatient) I poured them into the bucket and added water to top it up.  This is probably a mistake because if it foams up I'll probably have a mess to deal with :-).  I added the sugar, honey, pectin, and yeast nutrient and mixed it well.  It was still too hot to add the yeast so I waited overnight to do that.

We'll wait until I rack it the first time before we add the spices.  This will have the benefit of tasting the spices with the wine but will make it so the spices are not in the pulp.  So it's a trade off but that's what experimentation is for.

BTW - love the little digital scale I got for Christmas.  It made measuring out the honey very easy.

2/28/2020 - My ale pail doesn't have a good seal so I can't watch the bubbles but I popped the top yesterday and it looks like it is still bubbling.  I might give it a stir just to be sure in a few days.  No need to rush to the first racking.

4/8/2020 - A lot has happened in the past few months.  The COVID virus happened so everyone is on home lockdown.  Schools closed, I'm teleworking, getting tons done around the house.  Fiona will graduate early but possibly without a ceremony.  On the wine tip I racked the wine and squeezed out the mash.  It's kind of incredible how dry you can get it!  It's in the freezer to make pumpkin bread.  Also, I put a couple of pints in a small jug and noticed the spent yeast at the bottom and got an idea.  I siphoned the yeast and fed it some sugar and yeast nutrient and it came back to life, bubbles!  Then Mary B made bread from it.  We've made 2 loaves and the second was better than the first.  We're keeping the barm in the frigde and it seems very happy.  Making another loaf today for Easter.

So, after racking the wine I let it sit to clear out.  Some more pulp sank to the bottom and got some weird white stuff in it.  I think I remember this happening before.  Last night I racked it again.  I think the white stuff was just spent yeast.  Everything tasted fine.  So we spiced it and now it's sitting to clarify some more before I bottle it.  We went heavy on the spices this time and I really liked it.  For some reason I feel like the alcohol content is lower.  Not bad and still very tasty. 

Spices:

• Ginger - 3" root
• Nutmeg - 1 nut
• Clove - 1 tbsp
• Cinnamon - 2 tbsp
• Allspice - 5 berries

This is what it looks like today 4/8/2020.

Vanilla Lavender Bochet Jan 2020

I saw a bochet on a facebook post and looked up what it mean.  Bochet (Boh shett) is a mead where you boil the honey first to caramelize it and deepen the flavor.  I wanted to try some of my new Christmas toys and I had some honey so I thought, why not!  I asked Mary B for suggestions for flavor and she decided vanilla lavender would be nice.  And so it began...

I measured exactly 3 lbs of honey and put it on the stove and heated it slowly.  Since we have an electric stove I had to be really careful to not let it burn.  I used an infrared thermometer to monitor the progress as I stirred; I stirred a lot!  At over 240º it was boiling.  I turned the heat back to where it would boil but not super rapidly and boiled it for about 20 minutes.  Then took it off and let it cool.

I used a clean 12lb (1 gallon) honey jar and poured the warm honey in and filed the rest with water.  I wanted to try a math experiment that I thought up.  A gallon of liquid sugar weighs 11 lbs.  A gallon of alcohol weighs 6.6 lbs.  Water weighs 8 lbs per gallon.  Alcohol weighs 60% of the weight of sugar.  So I thought that maybe I could use the weight difference between starting and ending to determine how much sugar was converted into alcohol.  I made an assumption that no water will evaporate.  I know that strictly-speaking that's not true but I'm working with rough estimates for fun.  A true experiment would have a non-fermenting control but what fun would that be?

So here are the starting numbers:
3 lb Honey
8 tbsp Vanilla
1 tsp lavender
Water

Jan 7 2020
SG 1.100  25% sugar
Total weight  10lb  7.2oz

Jan 15
9lb  13oz
1.042 7% sugar

So here's my math experiment.  Convert weight to decimal:
10.45 lb
9.8125 lb

Difference:  0.6375  More than half a pound.  That's impressive.  So, if I didn't know the starting amount of sugar and I just wanted to know how much alcohol has been created I should be able to determine that by the amount of weight lost.

I started with 3lb of honey.  If it all converted to alcohol the final weight should be 60% of that or 1.8 lbs.  that's a difference of 1.2 lbs.  Does the math work out?  A difference of 4.4 lbs is one gallon of alcohol.  1.2lbs is .27 gallons of alcohol.  That's close to the original sugar reading.  When the conversion happens you end up with 60% less volume as well.  So you have to take that into consideration so you get 16.2% alcohol.

So, using what I learned above I should have converted 0.1448 gallons of alcohol which reduced for volume is 8.5% alcohol.  That's seems about right.  So this means I can use a difference in weight to determine the ABV.  Fun stuff.

So after all of that, all I really care about is the taste.  I swapped out jars to take it off of the old yeast and had a taste.  It's very tasty.  It has a sweet front with a bitter after taste that I like.  I think the bitter is the lavender, Mary B thinks it's the caramelization.  I took some new numbers when I racked it (listed above).  Since I used KV1116 yeast which maxes out at 18% alcohol this will probably finish dry but we can either drink it before that time or see how it tastes when dry.  Either way I think it will be very good.

Drank it, loved it.  Had a half quart left over that I let sit for a month to see how clear it would get.  It cleared nicely and was oh so tasty. And, alas, it is gone.  I'll have to make this again sometime.

Skål!

Jalepeno Mead January 2020

Jan 2 2020

Since this is such a favorite and has few ingredients I'm making a large batch this time.  My first ever 6 gallon batch.  3.3 lbs of honey per gallon and a few big jalepenos.

I put about 4 gallons of water in the jug and added 7 lbs of honey.  I used my new scale to measure it.  I started with this amount because I didn't want to overwhelm the yeast.  The full amount of honey comes out to about 27% honey.

I poured out about a half gallon of the mixture into a warm bath and pitched the yeast so that it would have a nice warm start.  This also gave the 4 gallons of water a little time to warm up from 60º tap temps.  Once the yeast was bubbling I put it in the jug.  As of this morning it's bubbling.  I'll watch the gravity and when it gets low I'll put in the remaining 13 pounds of honey and water.  I'll also put in the sliced peppers once I'm sure the yeast is going nicely.

2 Weeks Later or so (I forgot to write it down) I added the remaining honey and peppers.

February 22 - While Mary B and Fiona were away and dance camp NYC I racked the mead off of the lees.  It tastes wonderful already!  Most of the fermentation has stopped.  I put  cling wrap over the top and a rubber band.  It's sitting quietly and settling.